About news@JAMA and The JAMA Forum

About news@JAMA

news@JAMA features JAMA’s team of journalists and editors, who provide daily news about important developments in clinical medicine, biomedical research, and health policy, including findings from major clinical trials, alerts and new information from the US and international health agencies and professional societies, legislative updates, and breaking news on emerging public health threats. We also highlight some of the significant findings published in JAMA and the Archives Journals and other leading journals.

About The JAMA Forum

JAMA has assembled a team of leading scholars, including health economists, health policy experts, and legal scholars, to provide expert commentary and insight into news that involves the intersection of health policy and politics, economics, and the law. Each JAMA Forum entry expresses the opinions of the author but does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of JAMA, the editorial staff, or the American Medical Association. More information is available here. Information about disclosures of potential conflicts of interest may be found here.

The JAMA Forum team includes:

Eli Y. Adashi, MD, MS, is Professor of Medical Science at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, RI. A member of the Institute of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr Adashi has focused his writing on domestic and global health policy at the nexus of medicine, law, and ethics. A former Franklin fellow, Dr Adashi served as a senior advisor on Global Women’s Health to the Secretary of State office of Global Women’s Issues during the Obama Administration. Eli_Adashi@brown.edu

Andrew Bindman, MD, is Professor of Medicine, Health Policy, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at University of California San Francisco (UCSF). He is the founder and Director of the University of California Medicaid Research Institute, a multicampus research program that supports the translation of research into policy. Dr Bindman is a primary care physician and a health services researcher who for many years served as the Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital, where he continues to teach, provide patient care to a diverse low-income patient population, and promote innovative approaches for improving care delivery.

Stuart M. Butler, PhD, is a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Previously, he served as Director of the Center for Policy Innovation at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, where he focused on developing new policy ideas. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Graduate School. He has played a prominent role in the debate about federal spending, especially Medicare and health care for working Americans, arguing for solutions based on limited government and market competition. He was born in Britain and received his PhD in American history from St Andrews University in Scotland.

Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS, is Associate Professor and Vice Chair for Health Policy and Outcomes Research in the Department of Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. He is also Director of the university’s Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research. His research focuses on the study of information technology to improve pediatric care and areas of health policy including physician malpractice, decision analysis and cost-effectiveness, and health care reform. He has published two popular books on medical myths, and his work has been featured in many national publications. He regularly blogs about healthy policy at The Incidental Economist and tweets at @aaronecarroll.

David Cutler, PhD, is the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics in the Department of Economics and Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He served on the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council during the Clinton Administration and was senior health care adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine. His 2004 book, Your Money or Your Life: Strong Medicine for America’s Health Care System, was the subject of a feature in the New York TimesMagazine. Dr Cutler also was recently named one of the 30 people who could have a powerful impact on health care by Modern Healthcare.

Austin Frakt, PhD, is a health economist and Assistant Professor at Boston University’s School of Medicine and School of Public Health. He studies the interaction between economics and health policy, with a focus on health insurance markets within Medicare. Dr Frakt has been widely published in Health Affairs; Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law; Health Economics; Milbank Quarterly; and New England Journal of Medicine and is one of the principal contributors to The Incidental Economist blog. He received his PhD and SM degrees from MIT’s electrical engineering department and his BS from Cornell University in applied physics.

Lawrence O. Gostin, JD, is University Professor at Georgetown, Faculty Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, and Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights. He has chaired numerous National Academy of Sciences committees, proposed a Framework Convention on Global Health endorsed by the United Nations Secretary General, served on the WHO Director’s Ad Hoc Advisory Committee on Reforming the WHO, and drafted a Model Public Health Law for WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the United Kingdom, he was awarded the Rosemary Delbridge Prize for person “who has most influenced Parliament and government to act for the welfare of society.”

Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH, is K. T. Li Professor of International Health and Health Policy at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and a practicing internist at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System. He received his MD from Harvard Medical School and was trained in Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr Jha’s major research interests lie in improving the quality and costs of health care. His work has focused on 4 primary areas—public reporting, pay-for-performance, health information technology, and leadership—and the roles they play in fixing the US health care system.

Larry Levitt, MPP, is Senior Vice President for Special Initiatives at the Kaiser Family Foundation and Senior Advisor to the President of the Foundation. Among other duties, he is Co-executive Director of the Kaiser Initiative on Health Reform and Private Insurance. He previously was Editor-in-Chief of kaisernetwork.org, the foundation’s online health policy news and information service, and directed the foundation’s communications and online activities and its Changing Health Care Marketplace Project. Before joining the foundation, he served as a Senior Health Policy Advisor to the White House and Department of Health and Human Services, working on the development of President Clinton’s Health Security Act and other health policy initiatives.

Diana J. Mason, PhD, RN, is the Rudin Professor of Nursing and Co-director of the Center for Health, Media, and Policy at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the American Journal of Nursing, a member of the National Advisory Board of Kaiser Health News, producer and moderator of “Healthstyles,” a weekly radio program, and the lead co-editor of Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care and The Nursing Profession: Development, Challenges, Opportunities in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Book Series. She is President-Elect of the American Academy of Nursing and a fellow in the New York Academy of Medicine.

Joshua M. Sharfstein, MD, is Associate Dean for Public Health Practice and Training at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He previously served as Secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, as the Principal Deputy Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, and as Commissioner of Health for Baltimore. He is a consultant for Audacious Inquiry, a company that has provided technology services and other support to Maryland’s Health Information Exchange. A pediatrician, he lives with his family in Baltimore.

Mark D. Smith, MD, MBA, has been President and Chief Executive Officer of the California HealthCare Foundation, an independent philanthropy dedicated to improving the health of the people of California through its program areas, since its formation in 1996. A board-certified internist, Smith is a member of the clinical faculty at UCSF and an attending physician at the Positive Health Program (for AIDS care) at San Francisco General Hospital. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine. He has served on the Performance Measurement Committee of the National Committee for Quality Assurance and the editorial board of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Gail Wilensky, PhD, is an economist and Senior Fellow at Project HOPE, an international health foundation. She directed the Medicare and Medicaid programs and served in the White House as a senior adviser on health and welfare issues to President George H. W. Bush. She also served as the first chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine. She is also a current or former director of numerous nonprofit organizations as well as a director on two public company boards. Her expertise is on strategies to reform health care—particularly Medicare, comparative effectiveness research, and military health care.

To Our Readers

news@JAMA is going on hiatus as we consider new ways to deliver timely posts about medical news.

The JAMA Forum will continue to present expert commentary about health policy, politics, economics, and the law.

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